The design of an educational game to support the development of rhyming skills in children with a cochlear implant

Rhyming is a critical competence for reading success. For children with a cochlear implant, the development of rhyming is not an automatic process. It has to be educated by practicing and repeating it frequently. This paper elaborates on the design of a game to support the development of rhyming skills for children with a cochlear implant. For the designing process, the waterfall model is used. The requirements of the game were derived from a literature study and discussions with teachers (n=6) and therapists (n=4) (speech, movement and play) based on two questions. First: how do children with a cochlear implant learn rhyming to develop their phonological awareness? And second: what kind of educational method should be designed to support the learning process of rhyming in children with a cochlear implant? The final product of the study is a blended game. It concerns domino-like stones with pictorial signs and an audio-visual support package. The game is tested at the professor Huizingschool in Enschede, the Netherlands, with four children with a cochlear implant. The children enjoyed playing the game and were motivated to try to find rhymes and win the game, especially when played one by one. Also the teacher and a speech therapist were enthusiastic about the game. A firm conclusion about the effect of the game cannot be drawn however, because of the limited amount of test subjects. A quantitative study will be useful to compare the game with other methods or to include a control group.